Live from the Madison capitol building

The 4:00 pm closing deadline is here, and the bottom two floors of the capitol building in Madison is still filled with protesters. Will the police take action to clear the building? If so, some resistance is expected. Watch it live…

Update: The world is watching! At 4:30 pm CDT (2:30 pm here on the left coast), there are over 10,000 people watching this live stream.

Here is, I think, the take-home from this little episode of Walker’s War on Workers. First, tonight could have been just another evening of protesters in the Wisconsin capitol…a protest sleep-over like those of the preceding fortnight. But with the announcement that the protesters would be evicted from the capitol building on Sunday at 4:00 pm, the State Department of Administration created a huge confrontation. And both the old media and new media took a keen interest in the outcome. I didn’t really plan to live-blog this event. But with the live video feeds and instant reporting available through Twitter, the confrontation came alive–an epic battle was about to unfold between Walker and the protesters.

And the protesters won–big time. Tonight was a PR disaster for Walker.

The protesters won because the Administration had no choice but to back down. With a heavy media (old and new) presence, images of handcuffed teachers, students, firefighters, construction workers, etc. being dragged from the building would have been a disaster an order of magnitude larger that what we saw.

The protesters won because Walker’s cocksure posture has now been shown to be a façade, and one that is cracked. Walker is vulnerable.

The protesters won because the media saw police and firefighters, uniformed and off duty, stand with and even join in with the protesters. It does raise the question of whether the State Department of Administration made the decision to back down or whether the capitol police simply refused to clear the protesters out of the capitol.

The protesters won because, apparently, Republican Sen. Dale Schultz has decided to vote “no” on the bill. Yeah…it could be a trick. And, yeah, the Democrats need at least two more Republicans to kill the bill. But a Republican Senator rejecting the bill is huge (if actually true—I remain cautious). A week ago, I did not expect anything but the usual monolithic Republican support for the bill. If one Senator can bail, so can others. And now that the people of Wisconsin see that they can have a voice in the process, many more citizens will feel it worthwhile to write or call their elected leaders.

The protesters won through their longevity. A week ago, I could not imagine that the protests would be sustained through the week. Hell…a week ago I though it was unlikely that the bill would be killed. Now I’m not so sure. Tonight may be a defining moment—a turnaround—in Gov. Walker’s War on Workers.

I have no problems with unions and collective bargaining for non-public employees. I do not think public employees should be allowed to join unions and collectively bargain. They already have a pretty good deal compared to the private sector.

@2 Not any more. There used to be a trade-off working in the public sector. You got better job security, for which you put up with being paid less. Now, you can get the plug pulled any time, and the pay still isn’t all that great.

“They already have a pretty good deal compared to the private sector.”

Your “hunch” is simply not true.

This study out of Rutgers University shows that Wisconsin public employees take about a 5% hit in total compensation compared to private-sector employees with the same educational credentials.

This 2010 study from University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee looks at the pattern nationally. From the executive summary:

State and local employees have lower total compensation than their private sector counterparts. On average, total compensation is 6.8 percent lower for state employees and 7.4 percent lower for local workers, compared with comparable private sector employees.

@2: I really do not understand that line of thinking. Why should a teacher working in a public school or a janitor in a capital building have less rights than a teacher working in a Catholic school or a janitor cleaning an office building’s lobby?

@8 Yeah indeed – we constantly hear how government should be run more like a corporation from the wingnuts. How government should be limited in its powers and subject to the free market – that is until unions are involved, and then the law of the bigger enemy takes over, and government needs protecting from the ‘union thugs’. Hypocrisy.

(BTW, I actually tried to agree with something pudge wrote over on SP (partially agree, that is) and he still deleted my post because I’m a LIAR!

protester punches fox news reporter twice. another protester threatens to break his neck with the camera running! in 1993, texas democrats also ran away to avoid redistricting. seems like this is the democrats idea of handling defeat and establishes a horrible precedent. trying to make government employees out to be working class when we have 19% real unemployment and folks taking paycuts repeatedly in the private sector is ludicrous. the unions will lose. the democrats will lose. obama has made this his waterloo.

I myself laugh quite heartily and frequently when I ponder the abject misery and futility of these lives. Plodding endlessly through dreary day after dreary day with nothing to look forward to at the end of it all but perhaps a few years of touring in a used RV before the cancer takes them.

An RV! HA! And a used one at that!

But really, they have only themselves to blame. After all, they might have given their fate more careful thought when they were choosing to attend sub-standard public schools, or when they failed to attract a bid from one of the really good eating clubs.

You are running on bluster and not facts. There have been repeated studies that government worker wages do not keep up with the private sector. We (yes I am one) have traded salary for benefits. And you want to reneg on that contract.

@11 Government employees are working class, Rhonda. Around here I don’t know any teachers, cops, or caseworkers who drive Porsches and live in million-dollar homes. Only the Capitalist Class as that stuff. And it wasn’t government workers who brought the economy to its knees. You can thank the Capitalist Class and bankers for that, too.

@15 If a Fox reporter did get punched, I wonder if one of Gov. Walker’s provocateurs did it? It would be pretty hard to get a unionized librarian, teaching assistant, or police officer to do it, don’t you think? So if you’re Gov. Walker or Rupert Murdoch and you want a Fox reporter to get punched, you pretty much have to hire someone to do it.

Walker already said he was planting thugs in the crowd, and if he won;t do it the Koch Brothers will.

Like this:

Telling Secrets Out of School: Siringo on the Pinkertons

With 2,000 active agents and 30,000 reserves, the forces of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency were larger than the nation’s standing army in the late-19th century. The Pinkertons provided services for management in labor disputes, including armed guards and secret operatives like Charles A. Siringo. A Texas native and former cowboy, Siringo moved to Chicago in 1886, where first-hand observation of the city’s labor conflict (which he attributed to foreign anarchism) moved him to join the Pinkertons. Angry with the agency after it sabotaged the publication of his cowboy memoirs, Siringo published Two Evil Isms: Pinkertonism and Anarchism, a revealing chronicle of Pinkerton methods and deception. Guarding its reputation, the Pinkerton Agency succeeded in suppressing the book. Operatives bought up all copies available at newsstands and a court order confiscated the book’s plates. In the following passage from Two Evil Isms, Siringo (who, even when alienated from the Pinkertons, never displayed any sympathy for the labor movement) described how he infiltrated and undermined miners’ unions in northern Idaho during the 1892 Coeur d’Alene strike.

In My Humble Opinion, what we should be doing, is cutting spending when effective (I’d keep teachers and health care, and cut the arts, including the symphony) and increase revenue like raising taxes on on the top 10% who can most afford to pay it, penalizing companies who move American jobs overseas, and cutting corporate loopholes. There I said it.

@15 & 18, If a Fox reporter did get punched, I wonder if one of Gov. Walker’s provocateurs did it? Good Point. Walker screwed them bad cause now if anything goes wrong, the unions can say agents of Walker instigated it.

Dale Schultz, Senator from Wisconsin’s 17th Senatorial District will not vote for Gov. Walker’s Union busting Koch Bros. abomination. Not sure how many we need to stop this, but I heard a young lady say “we need two more” on the Qik feed. Cheers were audible as the announcement was made. The people are still in the statehouse. It’s official, we need 2 more. 17th District stretches from SW Wisconsin up to Juneau. Schultz must be a decent guy.

Republicans are starting to defect. Even THEY know this is bad and wrong.

Um… The guys that drive the snow plows up on snoqulime pass aren’t working class? The janitors at EWU aren’t working class? The guards and nurses that work at state prisons aren’t working class? I did not know this!

“Governor Walker’s union-busting budget plan contains a clause that went nearly unnoticed. This clause would allow the sale of publicly owned utility plants in Wisconsin to private parties (specifically, Koch Industries) at any price, no matter how low, without a public bidding process. The Kochs have helped to fuel the unrest in Wisconsin and the drive behind the bill to eliminate the collective bargaining power of unions in a bid to gain a monopoly over the state’s power supplies.”

From Saint Ronald Reagan, Labor Day speech, 9/01/80, NJ- “These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland. . . They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost. They remind us that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. You and I must protect and preserve freedom here or it will not be passed on to our children.”

@5 – So, your basic motivation is simple jealousy. Unfortunately, your jealousy is made possible only by your blatant ignorance. Public employees don’t have it as good as you’ve been told. Look at the studies. The truth is out there. Speaking of truth, your life would be much better if you occasionally looked at the bile you’re being fed. Truly.

@12 Huh? With gas approaching four bucks a gallon (already there in some areas), about all the “touring” those RV’s are going to be doing is getting moved from one side of the street to the other to avoid getting ticketed.

So, where’s your evidence of punching. Fox News goes from a camera shot to a random bit of video feed with no break and claims that the camera is down. Where’s the few seconds of black that would ALWAYS occur before MC (Master Control for you non-broadcast types) switches away to a new feed? Did the guy at MC just magically ‘know’ when to push the switcher? (and BTW, there’s a tape rolling either in the truck or at MC of the feed ALWAYS. If someone hit him, it would be on tape and they’d be playing it every 40 seconds if not more. I use tape as a generic term as most of it is video servers now.) FOX NEWS LIES….very apropos. there is ZERO chance that a reporter doing a live stand up got punched without it ending up on air, either live or taped. Punched just after or before a stand-up, maybe. During, oh hell no!

And you really want to bring up the Texas redistricting? You mean that which is sending Tom DeLay to PRISON for illegally funding R candidates to get the majority and then do the redistricting? You mean felonious (not just alleged, CONVICTED) actions by Republicans?

Saturday I bought some pizza from Ians for the protesters. When I told the guy I was calling from Seattle, WA, he said “well, your city is being well repped” (meaning well-represented).

Made me feel good! My favorite poster that I’ve seen so far:

United We Bargain Divided We Beg

If many people as SO DARNED WORRIED about ‘balancing budgets’ why were they so eager to reduce taxes for the wealthy & the corporations? Now screaming that the workers are all to blame for these deficits?

Bizarro sheeple world, and they can’t even figure out what Faux “news” doesn’t tell them.

I, for one, am glad that “Darryl” is able to report whose IP address is being used to comment. Because he has shown that he knows what comes out of Dan Savage’s ass when Dan’s ass is fucked (ie, “Santorum”), and I for one believe that when we know what comes out of Dan’s “Queer-Nationalist” ass that we will be better informed about what the stakes are for regular working-class Wisconsin people. Keep it tight (feels better that way)!

A unionized public employee, a teabagger, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies, then looks at the teabagger and says “watch out for that union guy– he wants a piece of your cookie.”

I heard the clip of the Fox News guy claiming somebody had punched him. My God, I never heard such hysterical, pittiful whinning. I’ve seen better acting about being injured when a football player goes down trying to stop the clock.

My guess is (a) he never got punched at all, and it was just an act he hoped would further his career at Fox News, (b) he got jostled in the push of the crowd, perhaps by his own people, and he’s such a crybaby he thinks that he’s being hit, or (c) he was told by Fox News to get into the midst of the crowd and claim he was hit.

Of course, right before this the crowd was shouting against Fox News, and he tried to portray it as union thugs trying to “shut down the discussion” and silence the media.

Why is the right wing such crybabies these days? I guess that’s why there are so many “second-amendment” fanatics among them – they get so scared when someone points out that they are liars, that they pee in their pants and want to shoot their way out of the discussion.

Of course, the whole reason Walker didn’t include police and firemen in his repeal of collective bargaining rights was that he was counting on them to enforce his orders.

Seems it didn’t work out quite that way. I can just imagine the discussions in the Governor’s office “Gee, I promised them that it wouldn’t apply to them – at least not THIS year! What more do they want????”

By the way, I loved the video on TV which showed a toddler being carried by his parents. He had a pacifer in his mouth, and a “union thug” sign on his chest.

Remember that GOP state representative in Georgia who wants to make miscarriage a capital crime? Yeah, that’s right, if you have a miscarriage in Georgia, this law will presumes you murdered your baby, and locks you up for life or puts you to death.

So who’s going to pay for the hundreds of thousands of lifers the Georgia penal system will have to house and feed in perpetuity?

I think the people who want this law should pay for its costs to society. Therefore, I’m proposing that the total additional penal costs of this law be calculated, divided by the number of Republicans in Georgia, and then each Republican will pay a special tax to reimburse the state for these costs.

I wonder if the next bill that guy introduces will be stoning people for trying to join unions. It’s obviously a states rights issue. If a state chooses to pass a law authorizing stoning, or making abortion a death penalty office, or negating all interracial or inter-religious marriages, the federal government doen’t have the right to interfere. That is a private matter between the people of that state and their state government officials they elect and the corporations and the one true church. Not the federal government.

A unionized public employee, a teabagger, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies, then looks at the teabagger and says “watch out for that union guy– he wants a piece of your cookie.”

More like, the government steps in and takes half of the cookies, gives three to the CEO, tosses one to the union guy and eats the other two.

The teabagger is like “where is my free handout?”

Meanwhile, the CEO is pocketing the rest of the cookies and saying to the teabagger “i’ll give you some of these later… but meanwhile, you might want to stop the union guy from getting any!”

@54. You are SOOOO misunderstanding the point of the fable. But since you are…

the government steps in and takes half of the cookies, Why is it that some people have this continuing meme that they should NOT have to pay government for services. How is that ANY different that what Walker is trying to do or any Teabagger? As always, what services do you personally benefit from that you are willing to have cut? or do you only want to cut the benefits to OTHER people?

And there are a LOT of people saying that an unfettered free market is NOT grand.

If Walker HAD used the state police to clear the capital building, within a few hours Gadaffi would be using it to argue that the U.S. was being hypocritical in it’s opposition to him using deadly force against protestors.

Of course, using state police to zip-tie and haul away non-violent protesters is a long way from sending helicopters and airplanes to attack them. But the U.S. should be a leader in how to deal with non-violent protests, not be forced to argue about equivilances.

As far as government job security goes, early last year I had a matter before the Mason County Duilding Department and heard comments from officials about how they had lost half their department staff due to layoffs. Not long after, I read how many of the state L&I electrical inspectors I work with had been laid off.

While we are talking about union jobs and politics, consider the following from Ron Judd in the Seattle Times:

“Admit it: Even though Boeing is hardly a role model for local employment, it was nice to see the company stick it, for once, to that faraway land filled with smug, conniving interlopers who constantly nurse from the teat of government subsidy while stealing away jobs from the Puget Sound region. OK, maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on Alabama.”

Thanks for bringing up tenure: that program needs to be eliminated. There should be no tenure for any job anywhere. Go ask the guy working at 7-11 if he gets “tenure.” Go ask the guy working as a bank teller if he gets tenure. Tenure is just an excuse for a bunch of arrogant fucking academics to retire and still collect a fucking paycheck and benefits while flitting around and pretending they’re all doing something useful. They’re all a bunch of fucking lazy-assed shitheads who think they’re better than everyone else. Fuck ’em! And fuck the teacher unions, too! Go get a job in the private sector if you don’t like it!

“And how, exactly, would that work? It seems you have no idea what you are babbling about.”

That’s because you and people who think like you are the biggest part of the problem. No, wait…you guys are the fucking problem!

i wasn’t saying anything about weather taxes should or should not be collected, simply that they are. and i was illustrating how government pays out to corporations in non-bid contracts first. the unions boys get their trickle down because that’s part of the government contracts.

“…There should be no tenure for any job anywhere. Go ask the guy working at 7-11 if he gets “tenure.” Go ask the guy working as a bank teller if he gets tenure…..”

I guess it never occured to “Incorrect” that there’s a big difference between being a college professor who’s been around long enough, and is published enough, to get tenure, and a 7/11 clerk or bank teller who may have little more than a a GED and will move on to another job within a few months to a couple of years.

When I was in graduate school I worked (as part of a work-study program) in an office where the college president was reviewing tenure nominations. I learned that at least at the college level, it was incredibly hard to get tenure, and those who did so were exceptionally bright and hard-working individuals. Their professional reputation was so important to them that they would hardly have slacked off, tenure or not. And by the time they got tenure, they had already proven that.

What tenure did was protect professors who’s ideology might not comport with the whims of political appointees, such as college trustees and presidents. I would think that conservatives would want just as much protection in that regard as liberals.

And for all the complaints about tenure, the actual examples of “lazy teachers with tenure” are awfully hard to find. I suspect that it’s just another of those right-wing urban legends, where they apply one or two examples to libel hundreds of thousands of dedicated teachers.

Not to be outdone by Utah wingnuts, Missouri State Senator Cunningham (R, of course) has a wonderful idea for leading us back to the good ol’ days of the 19th Century. From the summary of her bill,

“This act modifies the child labor laws. It eliminates the prohibition on employment of children under age 14. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed. It also repeals the requirement that a child aged 14 or 15 obtain a work certificate or work permit in order to be employed. Children under 16 will also be allowed to work in any capacity in a motel, resort or hotel where sleeping accommodations are furnished. It also removes the authority of the director of the Division of Labor Standards to inspect employers who employ children and to require them to keep certain records for children they employ. It also repeals the presumption that the presence of a child in a workplace is evidence of employment.”

let me buy you a beer, steve. if you gave me a chance, i think i might surprise you. i might be an anarchist and you might be a democrat but i’d be willing to wager that we’re both intelligent and engaged human beings with unique insight into the world. i’m willing to put money on it.

Oh, I was in a bad mood. Sorry. You might recall that I’ve complimented your work before. I find what you do interesting. Further, you don’t seem to march lockstep with anything, and I’m usually cool with that.

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